Field of the Invention
The invention concerns a process for production of raw cured products, in particular raw ham according to the precharacterizing portion of claim 1.
For production of cured ham, for example Black Forest ham, pork shoulders are de-boned, that is, bones are removed from the ham.
Then the meat pieces are cured, that is, rubbed down with a mixture of salt as well as in certain cases herbs and sugar(s). The amount of salt that adheres depends in large part upon the size or surface area of the piece of ham. Up to 200 of such treated ham pieces are layered in a large container for salting-through; during this storage as a result of osmosis a so-called “natural brine” occurs, which collects in the lower hams of the container and within itself forms a layering of the salt concentration.
Since as a rule not enough salt remains adhered during the first salting, and since this salt is further partially rinsed away by the formation of the natural brine, it is conventional to resalt the ham after a certain period of time, that is, the ham is to be rubbed-in with salt a second time and at this time needs to be reverse-stack, in order to balance out the influences of the differing brine layers. In addition to these natural brines, in some localities additional brine is poured on in order to keep the ham completely covered and to exclude air. In order to bring the ham into contact with brine evenly and on all sides, it is necessary to repack the ham one or more times in the container depending upon the size or, as the case may be, salt-time of the ham, that is, the ham is to be reverse-layered without further addition of salt. The re-salting or, as the case may be, repacking, is hard manual labor. In this process the taken-up salt content is subject to other influences such as length of time of salting, pH-value, temperature, etc. as well as the size or as the case may be surface area of the ham. After storage for several weeks the hams are removed from the container and dried. In most types of ham, for example Black Forest ham, smoking is carried out following drying or together with drying.
If the ham is sold in slices, in particular is already cut and packaged during the manufacturing process, then it is desired for all ham slices to have substantially the same size. For this it is known to press the ham into a cubic shape. From DE 41 22 514 C1 it is known to press the ham into square-shaped lattice baskets and to store this lattice basket in the brine filled container. By this curing procedure, the ham pressed in the lattice basket obtains a form-stability, so that following removal from the brine and the lattice basket it substantially maintains its quadratic shape.
At the end of the manufacturing process the ham should be salted evenly through it's entire volume, with a predetermined salt concentration. The amount of salt which the ham must take up and which must be supplied to it during the salting process is thus dependent upon the weight of the ham. In the conventional processes the hams are sorted based on their size, and hams of respectively substantially the same weight are stored in one container. Thereby it is to be achieved that all hams salted in the brine are to be salted to the same salt content. This is however not possible in optimal manner, since different salt concentrations develop in the brine in the container. This is based upon the fact that on the one hand the brine between the hams does not sufficiently circulate and on the other hand that a layering of the salt concentration develops. In order to prevent this, it is known for example from DE 40 00 296 C1 to keep the hams spaced apart from each other in the brine using the lattice baskets, and to stir up the brine using a stirring mechanism.
A further problem is comprised therein, that the salt uptake of the ham depends upon the pH-value. A low pH-value of the meat of the pork shoulder facilitates salt uptake, while a high pH-value impedes salt uptake. It is thus conventional to measure the pH-value of the pork shoulders and to use only the pork shoulders with low pH-value for production of raw ham, while the pork shoulders with high pH-value are processed into dried ham. Thereby a portion of the starting material becomes lost for use for the higher-value raw ham. Also, the starting material processed further into raw ham exhibits great variations in pH-value, which leads to varying quality of the end product.